Chapter 5
***
Time flew by, and it was Saturday evening.
My younger sister and I sat in front of the TV.
The fact that we were finally escaping poverty left me too excited to calm down.
And then the first Lotto numbers were drawn.
“…Hey.”
“Uh, y-yeah?”
“Why are the winning numbers different from the ones we bought?”
“W-well, yeah, I guess?”
We realized something was going wrong.
“Park Jung-ah, to the Room of Truth.”
And after a deep conversation in my room, we realized that this idiot had mixed up the draw number.
“B-but we’ll win someday, though?”
“So when exactly is that someday?”
“Umm... no idea...?”
At Jung-ah’s words, I swallowed a groan.
I felt sorry for Father, but at this point there was no helping it.
We’d have to keep repeating the same thing until we won first prize in the Lotto.
Either way, our image was already dirty enough.
If someone had to make the grand sacrifice, it was only right that Father did it.
The sacrifice of the individual for the family.
Once we got the winnings, Father would surely praise us for doing a good job.
***
Park Young-man had been worrying a lot lately.
If the people at his company heard, they’d probably say he had nothing to worry about, thanks to his kids growing up so properly(?) without even going through puberty.
But he had recently developed a worry he couldn’t tell anyone else about.
It was because the neighbors’ looks toward him had turned cold.
“Aren’t the people in the neighborhood a little cold lately?”
“Really? They bring us lots of food and stuff.”
He had talked it over with his wife, but all he got back was a vague answer.
“Hmm... maybe it’s just my imagination.”
“Anyway, how’s the doenjang soup?”
“Everything Jung-hee makes is delicious.”
Though many years had passed since their marriage, they were still hot for each other.
Was that why?
He never got to see the two troublemakers leave with awkward expressions on their faces.
***
My younger sister and I bought Lotto tickets with the same numbers every week.
Following our lead, the supermarket “customers” bought Lotto tickets with the same numbers too, but when they didn’t even win fifth prize once, they dropped out one by one.
“Hey, you sons of bitches! Give my money back!”
Among them were even human trash who had stolen the numbers and still demanded the Lotto buying money back, so my faith in humanity was shattered in an instant.
Well. Thanks to the people around us holding him back, nothing serious happened, but the fact that (that bastard) had been dangerous remained unchanged.
Anyway, buying Lotto tickets with my sister every Monday evening was added to our routine, and Father’s neighborhood reputation fell by the day.
By the time Father’s neighborhood reputation had fallen so low it couldn’t possibly drop any further.
I went on to high school, and I also shined on the high school soccer team.
At the high school level, it was getting a little tough, but thanks to having trained properly since childhood, I was still more or less able to compete for a starting spot.
Then, in April 2003.
The bigwigs from the football association came to the venue where the match was being held to choose the players for the Overseas Study Project for Outstanding Players.
Well. It was only natural that my notorious name from middle school would be listed as a candidate for overseas study.
The soccer trainees selected by the football association were chosen from across the country, but the difficulty was not as high as I’d expected.
“Remember this: I have no intention of tolerating traitors. If you still want to study overseas, then go. And if you’re going, make your debut there too. There won’t be any room left in Korea for traitors anymore.”
Most coaches, like ours, issued strong warnings to the players before the match began.
“If the association brings up studying abroad, what are you supposed to say?”
“I’ll say I won’t go!”
In truth, the coach probably couldn’t help it either.
A high school coach’s ability depended less on tactics or developing players well and more on how many he could send on to the pros or prestigious universities.
If a core member slipped away for study abroad at a crucial moment, it would obviously be hard to keep his job.
Since that was true for most teams, most of them would obviously play the match half-heartedly.
“Park Chan-hyuk, understand?!”
“Yes.”
Except for me.
***
The Overseas Study Project for Outstanding Players, which began in 2002.
Football association staff spent their days busy selecting players who would study abroad.
But the pace of the player selection work was more sluggish than expected.
That was because resistance from high school coaches and parents who felt uncomfortable sending minors overseas was strong.
And though it wasn’t reported in the press, another big reason was that the racial discrimination problems that arose during the overseas-study process had become known to parents.
On top of that, unlike the previous year, this time the players had to be split and sent to two places, so the association staff had twice as much work to handle.
One place was Metz in France’s Ligue 1, where players had been sent the year before. The player selection process there was easy. If the association recommended a suitable player, Metz accepted without hesitation.
But the problem was VfB Stuttgart, a mid-to-upper-table team in Germany’s Bundesliga.
Unlike FC Metz in France’s Ligue 1, this team’s process was far more complicated than expected.
The reason was that the coach who had recently taken over Stuttgart’s U19 team said he would decide personally after watching match footage.
It was only natural that the association employee, who had been in cahoots with the parents of players going abroad and pocketing a little “token of appreciation,” was disgruntled.
That said, the association employee couldn’t just arbitrarily reject Stuttgart’s proposal either.
Unlike France’s Ligue 1, the Bundesliga was a league with the symbolic significance of Cha Bum-kun having played there.
[A Bundesliga scout is coming to see Korean football prospects?]
To publicize his own achievements, the association president badgered them every day to make sure the project went through no matter what.
“Dongseong High’s defender Park Chan-hyuk is quite outstanding. You should focus on him closely.”
“Yes. Unlike the players we’ve seen so far, his physicality is quite good.”
***
The match started with the referee’s whistle.
When a few foreigners appeared in the stands, the kids visibly tensed up.
Separate from the fact that they were going abroad, the mere fact that a Bundesliga scout had come was enough to shake the players emotionally.
Well. Thanks to that, defending was easier in many ways.
When your body tenses up, your movements naturally get bigger.
I easily shut down the opposing striker’s dribble.
“Run!”
I met eyes with the left wing forward and, at the same time, slipped a deep pass forward.
“You little bastard! I told you, if I get the ball, you pass it to Hyuk-soo no matter what!”
The coach on the touchline immediately hurled a barrage of curses at me, but I didn’t care much.
‘So what.’
Anyway, once I got accepted into the Overseas Study Project for Outstanding Players, we’d have no reason to see each other anymore.
Ah. For the record, Hyuk-soo was a midfielder. He was the coach’s pet. That was because his family had a lot of money, and they knew a lot of people in the football association.
Well, if he wanted to study abroad, he’d be a lock.
But that was never going to happen.
It was a time when few players succeeded at overseas clubs.
On top of that, for a well-off kid, unlike in Korea where a stable starting role was practically guaranteed, overseas was the real wilderness, so it wasn’t an exaggeration to say there was no motivation at all to study abroad.
Anyway, my perfect long pass was stopped by the goalkeeper’s save.
It was a shame it didn’t lead to a point, but it didn’t matter.
“It’s okay! Good job! Put it in next time!”
What mattered to me right then was looking like I was encouraging my teammate.
Anyway.
I was in unusually good condition, so I succeeded in putting on a flawless performance in both attack and defense.
“Park Chan-hyuk, are my words a joke to you?”
Immediately after the match ended, I had to take a beating from the coach under the name of corporal punishment.
‘Fuck. You fucking bastard. I’ll get my revenge someday.’
***
A few days later.
Stuttgart, Germany.
Recently, Thomas Tuchel, who had taken over as U19 coach, made his selection from a video sent from the East.
An ordinary coach would have left it to someone else, but Thomas Tuchel didn’t.
Because he was a serious workaholic.
And above all, he needed to see the match himself to have a reason to reject the overseas-study candidate.
Unlike the club’s request to pick a few players for Asian-market promotion, Thomas Tuchel had no intention of selecting anyone for marketing if he didn’t like the player.
“He’s got good physicality, not bad for an Asian.”
“From the way he adjusts his teammates’ positions, he seems to know how to use his head pretty well too.”
But while watching the match, a player he quite liked caught his eye even more.
“This one will do.”
And so, the final list of overseas-study candidates was written by Thomas Tuchel’s hand.
***
[A High School Prospect Heads Abroad to Study Soccer.]
The Korea Football Association and the Korea Youth Football Foundation, as part of the “Overseas Study Project for Outstanding Players” launched in 2002 to discover prospects, will send four second-cohort prospects on a soccer study-abroad program for about one year on July 29, 2003: three to France’s Ligue 1 and one to VfB Stuttgart in Germany’s Bundesliga.
In particular, Park Chan-hyuk, 17 in Korean age, is drawing the most attention because he was personally singled out by Stuttgart’s U19 coach.